PM Tells Officials To Expedite Process For Quota To Madiga Community

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday called the Cabinet Secretary and other officials and instructed them to expedite the process of sub-categorisation in reservation for the Madiga community, government sources said.

According to sources in the government of India, the Prime Minister also instructed the officials to expedite the committee formation for reservation to Madiga community.

Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi, a community organisation of Madigas, is one of the biggest constituents of scheduled castes in Telugu states.

Since 2013, PM Modi has closely interacted with Manda Krishna Madiga, whose organisation MRPS has been demanding internal reservations within the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.

The MRPS was established in July 1994 in Edumudi village, Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, under the leadership of Manda Krishna Madiga and others, with the aim of implementing internal reservations.

Earlier in the month, PM Modi said that the BJP has stood with the Madiga community in every struggle for the last three decades.

"We are committed to ending this injustice at the earliest... It is our promise that we will soon constitute a committee that will adopt all possible ways of empowering you. The BJP made the laws about the atrocities on SCs and STs stricter. We ensured that the poor got a bank account, a gas connection, toilets, homes, etc. In all these schemes, the people from SC, ST and OBC were given the most benefit," he added.

The PM also took a swipe at the previous governments of Telangana and undivided Andhra Pradesh, which failed to consider the rights of the Madiga community and said that he went to Hyderabad for "an atonement for past deeds" of those political leaders and parties.

"People of the Madiga community and Krisha (Manda Krishna Madiga, an MRPS leader), I am not here to ask something from you; I am here for atonement for past deeds of political leaders and political parties since independence, which made promises to you and ditched you. I belong to the political arena so I apologise to you... You (people) have seen a lot of governments in the country. Our government's highest priority is to give preference to those who are deprived. BJP's mantra is Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas," PM Modi said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)